Milestones and Landmarks - A Few Reflections

I have fought a good fight,

I have finished my course,

I have kept the faith

(II Timothy 4:7, Douay-Rheims version)

Finishing a race, or coming through a struggle, doesn't mean that you have permanent retirement.  As a matter of fact, the success with which one finishes the last race or overcomes the last fight prepares and sets up one for the next race or battle.  In this life, there is a constant journey, which at times is like walking, but can also be a race in itself in which one's future depends on the successful completion of the race itself.  This is where I have been at the past couple of months.  2018 opened up with one of the most intense courses of my life, as I embarked upon finishing up a long-overdue Master's degree by preparing for my comprehensive exams in my program, which I took at the end of January.  Although most of the results of that test have come in, I am still waiting for the entire grade on the exam, which then determines if I will be awarded the degree.  It is not as ominous as it sounds, being I actually knew my material better than I thought, so I don't anticipate a problem.  But, sometimes the "waiting game" is the most difficult course to tackle, and that is where I am at as I write this today.  But, I had the idea of a good devotional, which also comes at a good time in the Church calendar as well, being Lent starts tomorrow - Lent too is a race to run for all of us, especially faithful Catholics, in that it pushes us to grow in our own spirituality.  The arrival of Lent and the completion of my comprehensive exams correspond also to another landmark in my life - 32 years ago this past Friday, I was baptized.  All of this together is a reminder to me personally of both how far I have come on my journey of faith, and how much I still have to travel.  And, so it is with all our lives. 

Back a few weeks ago, as I was preparing to take my exams, I had an unusual dream one night.  In it, I was in what looked like a dormitory of some sort, and a teacher I remembered from high school was sort of watching over all of us in it.  I was instructed to first partake of a light meal - a nourishing soup of some nature and a blood orange - and then was told I needed to rest, and therefore I was to lay in a small cot and just rest.  It was in this dream I was also anticipating the same bit of anxiety that I was feeling over my upcoming exams, and there was a message in the dream that spoke to me and has stuck with me.  The following Scripture sums it up:

In peace I will lay down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety

(Psalm 4:8)

The message God was trying to send me in that dream, at least I believe, was that He was telling me that all is going to be fine because He is in control of things, and now I need to just rest.  In combining it with the earlier Scripture, a clear message appears - by taking the effort to fight the good faith and prevailing, one needs to rest and enjoy the overcoming they have achieved, and also be assured that God is granting rest from a fight that was well-fought.  Taking these exams was a race, a struggle, for me, and as such it was something I have done with all my strength and God has seen it.  Now, He is telling me to rest.  I still have a little anxiety about the final numbers when they come in, and the wait can be excruciating, but I also know that I have got this.  More importantly, God has this.  A milestone, in other words, will soon be a landmark, and let me explain that further.

The purpose of a landmark is to commemorate something, while a milestone is an achievement.  Milestones are reached, while landmarks are established.  They can have the same meaning, but there is also an important difference.  A landmark sets a sort of standard for one thing - it is something we commemorate by going back to on occasion, and it stands as a monument to achieving a victory over something. A milestone, in other words, is an achievement that is based on an established set of goals.  A milestone is reached when the goal is achieved, or a step toward the goal is achieved.  To turn a milestone into a landmark, the path of the goal must be completed - the completed goal then becomes a landmark with many milestones leading to it.  Getting an advanced degree in school in essence qualifies as both - it takes a number of milestones to achieve the goal of a graduate degree, and those milestones include other degrees earned, what is learned, etc.  The accomplishment then becomes a landmark as it then is permanent and becomes a point of reference in one's legacy.  Landmarks are also identified by tangible symbols - a diploma, the hood that a person with a Master's or a doctorate earns, and the letters that can now be carried as a suffix to one's name.  Milestones are identified by other things - the grade transcript, the test scores, etc.  Those are milestones toward a greater objective.  Like an academic achievement, the Christian life is characterized by similar things.

Milestones of the Christian life are the Sacraments, but the identification of one as a Christian is embodied in a landmark - the Cross of Christ.  All of the Sacraments lead to the ultimate Landmark, the Lord Jesus Christ, and everything we believe, practice, and profess points to Him, as the late Josef Jungmann affirmed with the imagery of Jesus as the hub of a wheel in his seminal 1936 text The Good News and the Proclamation of Our Faith.  Jungmann notes that the doctrines of the faith radiate from the hub - Jesus - like spokes from a wheel, and in the same way the spokes extend from the hub, they also lead one back to the hub as well.  Jesus's by the Apostle St. Paul as the "Chief Cornerstone" in Ephesians 2:20 is a way of saying Jesus is that ultimate Landmark of our faith.  He is the source of our faith, and He is also its destination.  This is why all we believe, teach, and proclaim must always point back to Christ, and that is something I learned very thoroughly in four years of intense study at Steubenville.  Lent serves to remind us of that too - it shows us that we need to put aside those distractions and use this time to focus on our walk with Christ, thus placing Him back at the center of our faith.  The sacrifice of abstinence and fasting during Lent then serve as milestones leading us to the Landmark, the Chief Cornerstone, Jesus Christ. 

Sometimes though it is important between the trek between two of these milestones to just rest.  The Christian life is one that has at its core a struggle - it is the struggle of our will, the influences of a godless society, and God's will, and Lent serves to challenge us that we are to submit our will to God's, since Christ has now made us part of the kingdom through the sacramental life of the Church.  Much like the rigorous study for an exam, Lenten abstinence and fasting serves as preparation for us to know Christ better.  Some Protestants ignorantly and perjoratively condemn Lenten observance as being somehow a carryover from some imagined pagan ritual or something, but their accusations are baseless and devoid of common sense when they fail to realize that we all should strive toward closer communion with the Savior we claim to follow.  So, since my own conversion, I find it very disconcerting to hear Protestant fundamentalists bash Lent, yet they boast of their own "walks with Jesus."  It is our responsibility to pray for the ongoing conversion of the ignorant, and hopefully one day many of the people making these false accusations will understand that much of their own misconceptions are based more on anti-Catholicism than they are on actual truth.  We need to be careful of letting our own likes and dislikes color our faith, because we end up in doing so denying some very precious aspects of the Christian faith that can enrich us spiritually.

As this is the Tuesday before Lent, many of my fellow Catholics are finishing up their paczkis and pancakes, as they prepare for the Lenten season.  Let us remember though that Lent is not about giving up social media and eating fish sticks and cheese pizzas for the next few Fridays - it is about much more than that.  It is about a time of both pressing toward milestones, and for some it may be God calling them to rest - putting aside the craziness of our over-technicalized world and seeking to find Christ in the quiet place is a great rest for many of us, so we should consider Lent a time God is also calling us to rest in Him.  May we take that call seriously.

Likewise, for those of us facing other challenges, we need to remember something very important - God has this!  We have put in the hard work to get to that milestone, so now time to sit back and relax for a while.  I speak to myself as well as others, and hope too that through writing this I can even take my own advice to heart.  Hope to see you all again soon. 

The Granddaddy of the Big Band

Still continuing on this musical commentary, this week I wanted to touch on the African-American (Black) contribution to the big bands/dance bands.  The Black experience as far as the large orchestra is concerned is also intertwined with the emergence of the jazz and ragtime genres at the turn of the last century.  Looming above all this is the figure of one man, who rightly can be called a "granddaddy of the big band," and that individual is Will Marion Cook (1869-1944).  We will deal more with his legacy momentarily, but even with a figure like Will Marion Cook, there has to also be a background, and that background is in the minstrel show.

Minstrel shows were largely made up of either Black performers or of White actors and musicians who performed in "blackface," and often they reinforced the stereotype of the slow-talking, lazy, happy-go-lucky Black man from the South.  Among the earliest of these performers were Frank Johnson (1792-1844) and Joseph Postlewaite (1837-1889).  Predating Cook by many years, Johnson and Postlewaite were among a number of Black and other orchestra leaders who played society dances and minstrel shows alike, and they would be the embryonic influence of what would be called the "big band" over a century after their time.  Johnson was a prolific composer who played both the bugle and the violin, and among his compositions were The New Railroad Gallop, and in the 1830's he led a small orchestra that played in the UK ("Francis Johnson (composer) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Johnson_(composer) - accessed 2/12/2017).   This definitely puts him as an early forerunner of both jazz and dance bands, although much of the repertoire such groups played was standard waltzes, quadrilles, and other dances of the times which primary entertained White audiences. 

Frank Johnson (1792-1844)

Joseph W. Postlewaite (1837-1889) was a much younger contemporary of Johnson, and his composition, "Concert Hall Grand Waltz" published in 1845, launched a lucrative musical career for Postlewaite as a composer, as well as leading several society parlor orchestras in the 1860's and 1870's.  Like Johnson before him, he catered to a primarily upper-crust White clientele, and his legacy would also contribute to the rise of later large dance bands in the following century ("Joseph W. Postlewaite," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_W._Postlewaite - accessed 2/12/2018).  

A variety of Black minstrel and dance orchestras also proliferated during the 19th century, including groups such as the Malara Minstrels (1896), the Hicks and Swiger Minstrels, the McCabe and Young Minstrels, and the Richards and Pringle Minstrels, among others.  Not much is documented as to what influence Postlewaite, Johnson, and others had on a young Black composer named Will Marion Cook, who was also a student of Czech composer Anton Dvorak.  However, as Cook was a product of his times, I would theorize that these earlier bandleaders and composers had some bearing on Cook, as again he didn't emerge from a vaccuum.  It is now the point where Will Marion Cook is to be discussed.

Will Marion Cook was born on January 27th, 1869 (just a little over a hundred years before my own birth!) as William Mercer Cook, and his father, John Hartwell Cook, was an educated Black alumnus of Charles Finney's Oberlin College who worked for the newly-organized Freedmen's Bureau, which had the task of helping to educate and integrate freed slaves into American society.  Where Cook was born was the location of what would become the "Black Harvard," Howard University, in Washington, DC.  His father was a law student at the fledgling university, and wanted his son to have a well-rounded experience, thus causing him to be sent to Tennessee to be raised with his maternal grandparents.  He later followed his father's footsteps and attended Oberlin and he studied music there from the age of 14 (Marva Griffin Carter, Swing Along: The Musical Life of Will Marion Cook. New York:  Oxford University Press, 2008. pp. 5-13).  It was in 1885, when the National Conservatory of Music was founded by wealthy socialite Jeannette Meyer Thurber on Manhattan, that Cook's legacy reached an important milestone.  Thurber managed to attract Dvorak to her new Conservatory, and also took on a number of bright Black young people, including Cook, and here he was exposed to Dvorak's influence.  It also opened doors to his Broadway debut, where his scores, notably In Dahomey, made the stage in 1903, although Cook was directing and leading orchestras long before that.  (Carter, pp. 29-35).  This is not meant to be a complete composite of Cook's life, but rather provides a background to his founding of a very important orchestra that would impact the development of jazz both in America and in Europe.  

Will Marion Cook (1869-1944)

Cook's founding of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra around the year 1919 was pivotal in introducing some major figures of jazz to the world, including Eubie Blake, James Reese Europe, Sidney Bechet, and he would later become a mentor to a young Black pianist in Washington by the name of Edward Kennedy Ellington, better known to us as Duke Ellington, who affectionately called him "Dad Cook."  The 50-piece Southern Syncopated Orchestra doesn't appear to be Cook's first venture with wielding a baton, as he had led smaller orchestras since the 1890's.  He used the influences he learned from Dvorak and others, redefining them in the American Black experience, and a uniquely American form of serious music was founded, although due to segregation at the time Cook (much like his contemporary, composer William Grant Still) never was able to achieve what he had the potential of being.  Nonetheless, his contributions to the development of both American jazz and the dance band genre cannot be underestimated, but more importantly his legacy as an American composer was only realized many years after his passing. Many big band enthusiasts overlook Cook's legacy, which is unfortunate, and that is why I wanted to include it here.  He was one of the earliest big dance bandleaders, and thus is important to the history of the dance bands for his legacy.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any recordings of Cook's orchestra, and indeed the only recording I am aware of that showcases Cook is a recording from around 1923 of a young Black female singer named Ethel Waters entitled "I'm Coming, Virginia," accompanied by Will Marion Cook's "Singing Orchestra," on which Cook also plays piano.  Waters of course became a legend in her own right - her devout Christianity, many years association with Rev. Billy Graham, and her classic rendition of the old spiritual "His Eye is On the Sparrow," all speak for themselves - but this record is significant because one hears Cook's own playing.  It is really tragic that Cook's great orchestra was not recorded, as that would have been something amazing for collectors.  Perhaps - one can hope for miracles! - something could still show up in Europe where maybe Cook made some obscure recordings in the early 1900's.  If so, I definitely would love to know about those.  

Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra in 1919 in Europe

The legacy of Will Marion Cook as well as of those who preceded him, such as Johnson and Postlewaite, shed new light and appreciation on the evolution of the big band as a musical tradition, and it shows that these roots do run deep.  It also fairly acknowledges that the Black contribution to this development is integral, but at the same time many of those Black musicians were playing music that they learned from their White contemporaries - in the case of Cook, he was directly impacted by Antonin Dvorak.  However, like any good musician does, these talented Black pioneers took something they learned from their European neighbors, and they expressed themselves through it, thus adding another ingredient to a rich multicultural stew that would become the distinctly American art form called jazz later.  As we continue this discussion, we are going to talk later about the contributions of many immigrant communities - Jews, Slavs, Italians, etc. - to this rich tapestry.  Big bands/dance bands, in other words, have a rich family tree, and like any good genealogist we need to explore the whole tree rather than focusing on a part of it and creating a division.  And, that is the whole point of my own discussion in this area.  We'll see you again soon. 

The Parlor Orchestra as Precursor to Big Bands/Dance Bands

I had mentioned in my last article that I was going to be sharing many of my own perspectives on a musical genre I have loved and have also collected extensively for almost 40 years, and that is what is commonly known as "big band" or "dance band" recordings.  In the many years that I have enjoyed, collected, and studied this great music, I have come to several conclusions, and the purpose of many of my insights here have much to do with my own conclusions.  Of course, there will be some who disagree, and they are certainly allowed to do so - I am not presenting this as scholarly discourse, but rather as personal theory based on a few things I have observed.  So, if you are one of those people who gets your knickers in a knot over things, that disclaimor is for you.  It is really sad, as a side note, that one has to post disclaimors about everything these days, due to the "entitlement" culture of "political correctness" and other such drivel, and a person is unable to have an opinion about anything unless some internet "troll" comes along, gets butthurt by it, and wants to pick fights.  And, that leads to a second disclaimer - I know there exists the chance that even the most innocuous of comments will raise the hackles of some nasty individual, and if that happens here, that person need not post their rants, as they will be censored by Yours Truly - this is not a democracy, and I am the king of this domain.  In other words, crap will get flushed.  However, if you really want to learn about theories and such, and maybe do some comparison research of your own, you are more than welcome to - I also will welcome the exchange of ideas too, and if you know of any vintage orchestras I may not have heard of (the 1890's are new territory for me) from the period I will be discussing here, I am always eager to learn about them.  Therefore, with the preliminaries out of the way, let's get started.

Thomas Alva Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph and thus launching the "recorded sound era" in 1877, although some other sources say he was not the first to invent it but rather to patent it - that debate is beyond the scope of this article though, so we won't venture into that territory.  With the dawn of recorded sound, the following decades launched a plethora of recordings of various musical genres and other things, and they would revolutionize popular entertainment for over a century.  The earliest recordings were canister-sized shellac cylinders that were played on a sort of spindle with a needle, and these were manufactured well into the 1930's even.  At the end of the 1890's, a new format called the 78 rpm record disc was introduced, and would be the primary recording medium for almost 50 years, before the vinyl 33 rpm made its debut in the late 1940's.   Sound recordings introduced to the general public a new convenience of hearing one's favorite music without the effort of attending concerts, and the convenience of hearing music in the home was something that many musical artists capitalized on, and it also created a whole new breed of performing artist.  It was particularly convenient as far as organizing social events such as dances and parties, in that a sound recording was far cheaper than hiring a group of live musicians.  And, in that day and age, a group of live musicians could be substantial, as beginning in the 18th century we have what were known as "parlor orchestras," "chamber orchestras," and "salon orchestras," and these would have a significant bearing on popular music for decades to come. 

In order to avoid confusion, for the sake of this discussion I am going to limit the terminology to "parlor orchestra," and first it is important to understand what a parlor orchestra was.  In days past, many upper-crust folks - the aristocracy in Europe, as well as well-to-do families in the US - would throw various types of soirees, and these could range from cotillion dances, debutante parties, and other affairs to small, intimate gatherings.  In many estates of such individuals, these affairs would be held in a cozy but spacious room called a "parlor," which had the sole purpose of entertaining guests.  Today, when we think of a "parlor," we often envision a small room with quaint furniture and a wet bar, and that image evolved from what the actual parlor was.  In days past, the parlor was a large room with a dance area, and also a bar of sorts as well, and there were settees and other comfortable furniture for guests to lounge and socialize while nibbling on hors d'oevres and sipping drinks.  The size of the room was also to accommodate entertainment, and often this was in the form of the parlor orchestra.  The size of a parlor orchestra varied from a trio to a 50-piece ensemble, and its purpose was to play dance music as well as light music to set the atmosphere of the soiree being celebrated.  Many of these ensembles were operated by talented musicians who also had a shrewd business sense, and they capitalized on this to create permanent ensembles to play these events.  In the 20th century, several families of dance band leaders - the Lanins, Meyer Davis, and others - would employ this same formula to create dance-band empires.  Therefore, one source of the dance band tradition does come from these intimate parlor orchestras.

It is also worth mentioning that especially in the US in the 19th century, many of these parlor orchestras were often the enterprise of immigrant communities - Jewish, Italian, German, Irish, and other communities which were noted for talented musicianship marketed that talent in lucrative ways that appealed to the rich upper-crust clientele they would in time entertain.  This meant that elements of the folk music of these immigrants - such as klezmer, polkas, the tarantella, the tango, etc. - would enter American society and be integrated into the musical tastes of the public being entertained by them.  Black musicians, as well, were often scouted out for their talents, and this led to an interesting but necessary fusion between the Black "minstrel show" and the parlor orchestra, and the evolution could be seen of that later in the rise of jazz and ragtime.  All of these elements created a rich stew that also would be why many dance bands of the "Big Band Era" had diverse charts and played a variety of musical styles - it all started here.

I want to also make another observation - much of what we now call "classical music" was also at one time the creation of parlor orchestras, and indeed there is not a large leap from the parlor to the concert hall in many instances.  One notable example in this regard is the renown Strauss family who in essence created the Viennese waltz.  The patriarch of the family, an Austrian of Jewish heritage by the name of Johann Strauss I, began that legacy at the beginning of the 19th century, to be carried on later by his sons Johann II, Josef, and Eduard.  It was Eduard's son, Johann III (1866-1939), though who would be impacted by the coming of the era of recorded sound, and the family orchestra he conducted from Vienna did record extensively up until his passing - some of those early recordings were made in the 1890's and are available on cylinder records, although the most noted of the recordings were a series of sides he made for Deutsche Grammofon in 1903 ("Johann Strauss III" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Strauss_III - accessed 2/7/2018).  This is important as it established a direct link, in my theory, between Strauss and the later dance bands - Strauss led his own orchestra, and recorded under his own name, and although classified as a type of "classical music" by many, in reality it was formal dance music (waltzes and polkas) that he recorded.  That is also why he is included here as an important forerunner of the genre

Johann Strauss III (1866-1939) in 1900

That was in Europe.  Back in the US, the parlor orchestra was a little less formal and less high-profile than the legendary Strauss dynasty in Vienna, and it is not as specifically identified with "classical music" as is Strauss's.  One of the earliest of these orchestras was an ensemble led by Edward Issler (born 1855) that began to make records in 1888.  For me, it is obvious that Issler was in essence the first early popular dance orchestra to record and also one of the first to have a permanent roster of personnel (although Art Hickman is often credited with doing that in 1913).  Issler's orchestra started out as a parlor orchestra of four musicians (a cornetist, a flutist, a violinist, and Issler himself at piano).  Later, he added more instruments - a trombonist and clarinetist as notable - and his recording career was approximately 12 years, with his last recordings being made in 1900.  All of the Issler recordings are on cylinder as well, and even after he ceased recording he was said to have performed with his group into the early 1900's ("Issler's Orchestra," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issler%27s_Orchestra - accessed 2/7/2018).  Many of Issler's recordings can be heard at www.archive.org.  

Edward Issler (1855- 1942)

Another important musical figure and leader of a noted parlor orchestra from this period is the personage of Frank P. Banta (1870-1903).  Banta's legacy was carried on by his son, Frank E. Banta (1896-1968), who was also a ragtime piano legend.  Banta's orchestra was an outgrowth of the elder Banta's work at accompanying vocalists beginning in the early 1890's. and around the year 1893 he began an orchestra called Banta's Parlor Orchestra that recorded in the period.  Banta was also an early collaborator with famed ragtime banjoist Vess Osman during that period, and is often included on Osman's recordings as well ("Frank P. Banta and Frank E. Banta," at http://ragpiano.com/comps/fbanta.shtml - accessed 2/7/2018).  

Frank P. Banta (1870-1903)

A fourth person of mention is the orchestra of Charles Fischer (1879-1948).  Fischer was a popular musician and orchestra leader around his native Kalamazoo, MI, along with his brother Burton.  They formed their first professional orchestra in 1896 after Charles had played for years with the symphonic orchestra of Chester Bronson, and in essence Fischer bridged the era of the parlor orchestras of the earlier eras and the jazz and dance bands of the 1920's.  However, they didn't make their first recordings until 1917, at around the same time the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues," which is considered the first commercially-recorded jazz record.  Evidence suggests that the Fischer Brothers were performing well into the 1930's when they eventually went into the music publishing business.  (Information taken from "Charles L. and Burton E. Fischer," at http://www.kpl.gov/local-history/biographies/charles-and-burton-fischer.aspx - accessed 2/1/2018).  Kalamazoo seems to be, much like New Orleans, a hub for many of these early parlor orchestras, including White's Quadrille Band in the 1880's, as well as many before the era of recorded sound, including Pierce's Band, the Hull and Arnold Band, and L.L. Harris and Company, dating as far back as the 1850's - L.L. Harris was apparently an early band broker similar to the Lanins and Meyer Davis later (information from "Social Music in 19th-Century Kalamazoo," from http://www.kpl.gov/local-history/arts-entertainment/social-music.aspx - accessed 2/7/2018). 

Fischer's Orchestra in 1904

Hull-Arnold Quadrille Band, 1875

White's Band, 1880

There were also tons of other groups like these throughout the nation too at the time, notably the Peerless Orchestra and the Columbia Orchestra, among others.  And, of course, among Blacks there was the legendary Will Marion Cook, who will be the subject of a later discussion.  Also for another discussion were the dozens of ethnic orchestras - klezmer outfits, polka bands, and other such groups - that also contributed to this whole story.  All of them deserve mention, as they all contributed to the greatness of the genre many now know today as "big bands." 

The purpose of documenting these ancient parlor orchestras is now going to provide a wrap-up to my discussion.  I realize that much of what I am proposing here will probably invite disagreement from big band purists, many of whom unfortunately think the whole thing began when Benny Goodman recorded "King Porter Stomp" in 1934.  My contention though is that nothing comes out of a vacuum and that these parlor orchestras provided a foundation upon which Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and even "sweet bands" such as Lawrence Welk would rise from later.  I am also not content any longer to accept that the term "big band" was somehow linked to Fletcher Henderson's first usage of it in 1923, or Art Hickman's founding of the first permanent roster of orchestral employees ten years earlier, and although until recently I held the view that Will Marion Cook was the "grandfather" of the big bands, I cannot in good conscience say that either.  A lot of things came together, developed, and then evolved into the music many are familiar with (well, not so much with younger generations today) that inundated the airwaves in the 1920's into the early 1950's.  The music, I argue, has deep roots that even stretch back before the era of recorded sound, and evidence suggests that archetypes of the dance orchestra may have existed as early as the late 1600's.   Also, much of what is called "classical music" had its roots in these parlor orchestras as well as the genres that preceded them, and therefore that has to be taken under consideration as well.  They also seem to be regional phenomena as well, with cities such as Kalamazoo, MI; Savannah, IL; and New Orleans having prolific parlor orchestras forming and performing in the time period.  That too would bear more research and discussion as well.

As this is an informal series, I will be writing periodically about this subject, and I want to next address the role of Will Marion Cook and the Black "minstrel show" as far as it relates to both the development of the big band as well as the evolution of jazz in general.  So, I will see you next time.  

Perspectives on Music - An Introduction

Over the course of the coming year, I want to begin talking more about one of my biggest passions, and that is collecting vintage dance band records and early jazz.  I have discussed various aspects of my hobby before, as it is a very defining part of my own identity as well as being something I have been into for about 36 years now.  I am not going to set a timetable for when I visit this topic, but there are a few things I am working on this year which more or less involve some new dimensions to it that have caught my interest, and some of them relate to the current socio-political climate in this nation as well.  I also have an objective at some point during the year to embark on a project of my own documenting the history and evolution of what is often called the "big band," and this will serve as kind of an introduction to coming attractions.

There are two topics I want to discuss as sort of an opening to this subject, as both of them are things I have pondered on personally over the years.  First, it is the term "big band" itself - is it appropriate terminology for this genre of music, or should a better designation be given to it?  Second, I want to also tackle the common mythos that jazz as a musical phenomenon is the exclusive creation of the Black community - research has shown that in its earliest days, jazz had other influences too that contributed to its sound, and many researchers (namely the late Richard Sudhalter, to whom I will be referring a lot, as his massive tome Lost Chords addresses this issue in detail) have begun to document that.  Mind you, it doesn't diminish the Black contribution, nor does it take away from appreciating such stellar talents as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, or Dizzy Gillespie, but it does show that more than one ethnicity contributed to the growth of what is in reality a truly American art form.  As I am still compiling my own material and research, this will be something ongoing that I will be dealing with.

Let us take the first topic first, the name "big band."  "Big band" is a common and generally accepted term, as are terms such as "dance band," "swing," etc.  The dictionary definition of a big band is simply an ensemble of typically 8-10 musicians, divided up into three sections (brass, reeds, rhythm) that play arrangements of jazz and other popular music.  A "dance band" is a broader definition, in that it is defined as an instrumental ensemble of any size that plays music for dancing.  "Swing" is a music that is played primarily by more jazz-oriented big bands featuring "hot" rhythms, improvised solos, and riffs and other musical devices.  In the strictest sense though, none of these terms for me truly capture the music.  For instance, as far as the term "big band" goes, there were many small groups of the era that played the same genre of music (notably John Kirby's sextet, Fats Waller, and early "lounge" groups such as the Three Suns), and by strict definition they were not big bands - some of them were even soloists.  "Dance band" is a little more inclusive, but a problem exists there too - many large ensembles, such as Paul Whiteman's, Fred Waring's, Horace Heidt's, and Stan Kenton's, were show bands (or, in the case of Kenton, more progressive large jazz ensembles) who rarely played dances, and in Whiteman's case there is also the phenomenon of "symphonic jazz" to consider.  In recent years, another type of orchestra, the "documentary orchestra," (such as the Netherlands-based Beau Hunks Orchestra) is of the same genre but doesn't play dance music necessarily either.  The third term, "swing," also has some problems, as this term is often associated with more "hot" jazz-oriented bands such as Benny Goodman and Count Basie and would omit some pretty popular orchestras - Guy Lombardo, Sammy Kaye, Lawrence Welk, etc. - who were also part of the era.  All of this leads to a very important question I have been pondering, as an aficionado of all this type of music - what DO you call it then?   As of yet, I have not come up with any takers, but in time there may be something that encapsulates the music as a whole without exclusion.  For many people who love this music as is though, there is really no problem with the terminology - older fans easily refer to both Glenn Miller and Guy Lombardo as "big bands," and also often include the Three Suns and other small groups in the description.  Unfortunately though, when it comes to something like this I tend to be a little more anally retentive, and want to find that right name that encompasses the entire musical form on this.  There is also eras to consider - for instance, being Paul Whiteman was the orchestra of the 1920's and terms such as "swing" often are relegated to a timeframe that spans roughly from 1935-1945, yet Whiteman was considered a "big band" leader as well; what exactly does one do with that??  Then, let's broaden the net further - this music didn't just appear out of a vacuum either, as prior to 1920 there were large bands around too - James Reese Europe, Art Hickman, Harold Yerkes, and others come to mind.  Some are even 19th-century bands which foreshadowed this great music, and deserve inclusion as well - Edward Issler, Will Marion Cook, and even Johann Strauss III come to mind here.  As a serious collector with the genuine love for the music, I am also one of those types of people who wants to dig back as far into its roots as I possibly can, and as I am also a history buff, I understand logically that nothing just appears out of a vacuum either - there are predecessors, contributing factors in the development of phenomena, etc., to consider.  In due time, I want to actually write something on those 19th-century roots of these large bands, and it should prove interesting to see.  Any rate, terminology is something that will continue to be a question for me personally, and maybe by looking more into it I can begin to formulate a solution.

The second issue is a little more controversial.  As we live in a society that is increasingly capitulating to the mindset of "political correctness," it seems that almost anything that anyone says or does can be misconstrued as "bigoted," "racist," etc.  It is to the point that civil discourse is not even a possibility anymore, being that an opposing view can easily be shut down if the person opposing it finds it in some weird way "offensive."  The area of music, and in particular jazz, hasn't escaped this nonsense either.  One particular example of this involves the personage of Richard (or "Dick") Sudhalter (1938-2008), a very outstanding musician and historian who did much to preserve the classic orchestral jazz of the 1920's and 1930's, in particular the legacy of Bix Beiderbecke.   Sudhalter, in the early 1970's, was so into this that he organized a fantastic ensemble called the New Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and if you have the opportunity, you can check out videos of this on Youtube and other venues.  In 1999, Sudhalter authored a massive tome called Lost Chords, and its primary focus was on the "unsung heroes" of early jazz who happened to be White musicians, of which there were many.  The book was excellently documented, and actually did quite a service to a lot of forgotten legends of both the "Jazz Age" and the "Swing Era."  However, the ever-vigilant lapdogs of "political correctness" also took notice of this, and they attacked Sudhalter's book as being "Eurocentric," "racist," and other stupid and ridiculous allegations.  He was called "the Pat Buchanan of Jazz" (which was also unfair, since Buchanan is not a racist either), and even respected Black jazzmen such as Branford Marsalis said "This book does not deserve the dignity of a response.  It's not an argument I'm prepared to devote five minutes to." (Matt Schudel, "Musician Richard Sudhalter: Jazz History Left Bitter Note," Sept. 20, 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903832.html - accessed 2/1/2018).  Another pundit of "political correctness" under the guise of being a reviewer, Jason Berry, said that "This is a mountainous, flawed vast reach of a book that promotes a color-blind interpretation of jazz history." (Jason Berry, "White Men Can Jam," July 11, 1999 at http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/11/reviews/990711.11berryt.html - accessed 2/1/2018).  Another writer, Gerald Early, is a little more charitable but no less critical when he asserts that Sudhalter is trying in desperation to over-inflate the worth of the subject matter (seriously??) (Gerald Early, "Multiracial Roots - Clearing a Larger Space for Whites in the History of Jazz," March 7, 1999 at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-03-07/entertainment/9903070152_1_richard-m-sudhalter-jazz-lost-chords - accessed 2/1/2018).  There are tons more of these types of reviews, and the reviews themselves need a critical analysis too, as they are doing what they accused Sudhalter of doing but that he was not even guilty of - viewing jazz through the eyes of race rather than fact.  Sudhalter's book, at almost a thousand pages, is a bit to tackle - I am still slogging through it even as I write this.  However, by what I have read so far, there is no evidence in Sudhalter's writing that even suggests that Blacks were less important, nor does anything suggest that he is in any way "racist" against Blacks and thus guilty of "White revisionism."  On the contrary, anyone who is familiar with Sudhalter's work knows for instance that he rightly acclaims Duke Ellington's genius (and who doesn't - Duke was phenomenal!) as well as always giving credit to the tremendous talents of great Black jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong.  Credit is given, in other words, where it is due.  But, here's the rub - Sudhalter didn't want to tread a well-worn path of writing yet another "history" of jazz with the same narrative.  That road was already paved, and many good works are out there which document the Black contribution quite thoroughly - therefore, instead of nitpicking Sudhalter's book the "critics" need to eschew "political correct" dogfighting and just read the other works available!  The focus of Sudhalter's book is the same as any great scholarship would encourage - he is dealing with a particular aspect of jazz history, one overlooked a lot, and there is nothing wrong with that at all.  For those who insist that jazz is an exclusively Black art form somehow "hijacked" by the White man, to me they are fostering a narrative that is racist, as anyone who collects records understands that jazz was not only full of White musicians in its earliest days, but they were even multicultural - of those "White" musicians, many were Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Mexicans, other European immigrants, and others; jazz, like America itself, was birthed in a "melting pot," and this included as well the valuable Black contributions too.  And, let's look at those Black contributions and where they came from - mostly, they were borrowed from Europeans, tweeked with the touch of the musicians themselves, and there you have it!  Bottom line, no one "stole" jazz from anyone - many ingredients went into the pan to create the recipe, and that is what Sudhalter's actual premise in the book was.  If the politically-correct "critics" really wanted to pursue this, the same could also be said of rock and roll - rock and roll was as much the creation of Appalachian Whites as it was Black rhythm-and-blues, and most honest historians of rock music will tell you that the earliest rock and roll recordings were in reality more like country and western music (Bill Haley, etc.) than they were like Black rhythm and blues.  That assertion should raise the hackles of the "thought police," to be sure!  This Balkanization and fragmentation of American society needs to stop, people - many people of all backgrounds made contributions to this nation, and jazz is a microcosm of America in general - Blacks, Latinos, Whites....they all gave something to what is America!  If some idiot considers that "racist," then I would suggest such a person make an appointment with their physician for a cat scan, as you need one - people like that have some unresolved issues, seriously.  I personally believe Sudhalter did a great service to those of us who appreciate jazz as an American art form, and much of the nit-picking and race-baiting done against his work is extremely unjustified.  This crucifixion of Sudhalter's work by ding-dongs who want to politicize everything is starting to get very old, and to be honest I would like to tell these morons to just enjoy the music and SHUT UP!  I will have more to say on that too as the year progresses and I am able to do a more thorough reading of Sudhalter's work.

I know that I may have gotten a little impassioned in writing this, but to be honest politicizing of almost every subject under the sun has been a personal pet-peeve of mine for a long time.  In regard to this great music, we need to think about this nugget of wisdom - would Louis Armstrong, Red Nichols, or any other legendary musician of that era have really cared who created the music??  Probably not - they loved playing it and making sure their audiences - Black, White, and everyone in between - enjoyed it, and many of us do; it is great music to be loved, preserved, and passed on to the next generations.  Maybe that is a big problem that is contributing to America's decline these days - we are so damned polarized and politicized about everything that we cannot enjoy the simple pleasures of life.  You can't watch a TV program for instance without some aspect of either the feminist mindset or the "gay agenda" being rubbed in your face, and people who like sports cannot enjoy a football game without some overpaid, spoiled athlete making political statements by "taking the knee" whenever the national anthem is sung.  This is insanity, and the average person is getting kinda sick of it.  We cannot even surf the internet or participate on social media in anything unless some dumb "troll" takes offense and tries to start fights and stir up trouble.  What did it for me recently though was the new Star Trek -Discovery series.  I have been an ardent Star Trek fan for many years, and have watched practically every series and every movie, so like many fans I was elated to see a new series.  And then, I watched it - in pushing political agendas, the new "writers" of this series made it so sloppy that it was hardly recognizable; the story was disconnected from the rest of the legacy, and all the writers seemed to want to do was push agendas by introducing gay characters and other crap at the expense of the story line. Two episodes of that claptrap was all I could stomach honestly.  And now, the "political correct" Nazis are trying to even re-write past material now by attacking jazz and other music - many of these people are unemployed, probably have a substance abuse (or Tide pod consumption) problem, and they have nothing better to do with their time than to grouse about alleged "injustices."  They need to leave my music and interests alone, and allow free expression and history to be what it is without "offense" and alteration to accomodate pansies.  You will find me addressing this more as I go along, as I will have a lot more to say about it too.

The legacy of the orchestra in American music is a rich one, and with the tampering of "thought police" aside, I have found collecting recordings of this music to be a fulfilling hobby for many years, and hope to continue to do so.  I want to share this interest with others, but in doing so, I have a dire warning - in writing these articles, I am sure to draw some disagreement, and for those that disagree, that is your right to do so.  But, one thing I will not tolerate is slander and censorship of my perspective - I don't do that to you, so leave me alone too.  Also, the best advice I have for those who take issue with my perspective on things is this - don't read it!  Some of these people have better things to do with their time than to troll what I and others write or say, and perhaps they could make themselves more useful if they got their own hobbies.  And, I refuse to engage such idiocy anymore personally - if I "offend" you, suck it up, buttercup!  That being said, I will be back soon with more on this subject and others. 

Thoughts on Last Night's State of the Union Address

Over the years, the annual "State of the Union" address of our Presidents hasn't been something that caught my interest.  I do try to watch some of them every year, as it is important to understand what is going on, but in particular with the last President (Obama) there was only so much I could handle before I would have to change the channel to a re-run of Mork and Mindy or something in disgust.  However, last night actually caught my interest in a real way, as in many aspects President Trump's address was different from many in previous years.  And, that inspired me to share some thoughts on it.

I also wanted to mention that I have not exactly been a great fan of Trump's - I didn't vote for him in the 2016 elections, and to be honest I was a bit skeptical about his election.  However, so far I can honestly say I have few complaints about how he's been doing.  Granted, he isn't perfect, which we all know - the "$#!+-hole" comment, for instance, could have possibly been more judiciously thought-out (it wasn't what he said so much that was wrong - we all know, and those who have been there can also say, that places like Haiti would indeed qualify for such a description - but rather how he said it; perhaps a better descriptive was warranted by the man representing the leadership of the free world). But, for the most part, Trump has managed to actually do something that many of the career politicians who leech our resources have failed to do - like him or love him, he is at least trying to keep his promises.  Compared to the eight years prior to his election, life has been somewhat better than it was when Obama was in office, to be sure.  However, we have not "made America great again" yet - America socially right now more resembles Berlin in 1946 - there is a lot of damage to clean up, and much of our standards are in tatters, so that will take some time.  That being said, the question is, can Trump do it?  Let's discuss that a minute before going into the actual SOTU address itself. 

As culturally I am a paleoconservative, politically a Monarchist, and economically a Distributist, much of my own thought about American Republicanism is somewhat admittedly critical.  To be completely honest, the system was broken before it was built honestly.  America calls itself a "democracy," but to be honest that may not be a good thing.  In his book The End of Democracy (Los Angeles: Tumblar House, 2014) Christophe Buffin de Chosal points out on page 31 that "As long as democracy has existed, every means has been devised so that the 'self-ruling' people have in practice almost nothing to say....Democracy has produced a ruling class propped up by the political parties, whose foremost objective is the preservation of power."  He notes further on page 32, "Once in place, the parties do not in the least seek to serve the common good, or rather they do so only if it first serves their own interest, which is to stay in and enjoy power."  On page 48, de Chosal nails the bottom line to all this - "Political power, in a democracy, always thus has a tendency to grow weak and the money powers to grow stronger."  As my good friend and noted American Monarchist Charles A. Coulombe also pointed out recently on a video broadcast called "Off the Menu," the problem with a Presidential government is also that if a President like Trump is elected with good ideas, the term limits he has in office would not allow time to implement them, and his successor can undo everything - this is made more real by the fact that in our nation there is a cultural divide between "Progressives" and varieties of Conservatives, and the mob rule of the "democratic process" allows the media and Hollywood to impact and influence cultural values, which in recent decades has not exactly been too good.  De Chosal's comments bring to light two important aspects of this - first, incumbent career politicians - those who de Chosal describes as "a ruling class propped up by the political parties, whose foremost objective is the preservation of power," to only serve the common good when "it first serves their own interest, which is to stay in and enjoy power."  Second, it is another of de Chosal's observations that catches our attention - political power tends to grow weak and the money powers tend to grow stronger.   We see this happening in so many cases where Hollywood interests, big corporations, and the media buy off politicians and assert their will over that of the citizenry, as well as imposing their values.  With that is their pet causes - feminism, the "LGBTQ" agenda, etc.  In other words, democracy degenerates into an oligarchy of rich Congressmen who sit on their butts, do nothing, and then come against someone who does make a stand against their pet interests because it could jeopardize their million-dollar homes and offshore accounts.   A good example of this is the recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which should be something our government should recognize but refuses to - why?  Reason is, Turkish money is bankrolling many of those who are supposed to be elected to represent their constituents, and in the case of some such as Steve Cohen in Tennessee, Eddie Bernice Johnson in Texas, and John McCain in Arizona, it means outright hostility against Armenian-Americans and others in favor of Turkish money.  Or, let's look at Nancy Pelosi, whose actions in last night's State of the Union address were so embarrassing and disrespectful that they are almost laughable if her power was not so dangerous - the people spoke in this election when Trump was voted in, but she, Hillary, and others like them called the average working American citizen "deplorable" for exercising their rights to vote.  And, they don't care - the average blue-collar guy who works his butt off and just wants to provide a good life for his family means nothing to Pelosi and her kind, but the rich, spoiled Hollywood stars and NFL athletes who disrespect the national anthem do because they have money - de Chosal's observation, then, becomes a reality.  This is the other "Golden Rule" that many of the elected officials in Congress follow as a creed - "he who has the gold rules, while those who don't are fools."  The average person who is our neighbor and co-worker has not been oblivious to this either; they will quickly tell you if they are being honest that they have little faith in our government.  It can lead to hopelessness and frustration, and indeed has as we have seen "special interests," biased media, and spoiled rich celebrities take control of the values system in this nation with a negative impact.  It is that hopelessness and frustration that has made someone like Donald Trump possible, and hence why the State of the Union address yesterday was so pivotal.

In last night's address, President Trump was attempting to be conciliatory in stating the obvious - we have some major problems that need addressed in this country, and it is for the good of the working American citizen that they need to be addressed.  Problems such as illegal immigration (a big one, which the President also attributed to the rise of drug abuse, gang violence, etc.), the economy, and also healthcare.  What he said made excellent sense, and not only did he just merely pontificate, but he introduced people who exemplified what he was saying - the North Korean expatriate with the crutches, for instance, as well as the policeman and his wife who adopted the newborn child of a heroin addict.  Whatever the intent, this personal dimension to Trump's address definitely resonated with most - except, of course, the pickle-faced Democrats sitting in the chamber, many of whom looked as if they were about to have strokes or episodes of regurgitation (one noted that Pelosi looked like she was sucking on a Tide pod, which the meme exemplifies below).  I imagine too that a Marxist like Bernie Sanders (in true Southern sentiment, I say, "bless his pea-pickin' heart!") was probably mortified at the fact that a survivor of a regime Sanders idolizes (North Korea) being present could also be seen by Sanders as a threat against his own Marxist utopian delusions.  Also, Trump's correct assessment and identification of rogue regimes like the current Iranian government as well as North Korea was excellent - he was right on that, and hopefully he can implement what he declared to do.  Overall, Trump had many strong moments, but maybe a few weak ones as well.

One area I would significantly differ with Trump on is in regard to Russia.  Russia is not a threat, nor is it in opposition to us - unless, of course, we provoke them as Obama tried to do, which is never wise in that Putin isn't one to take a lot of crap.  We have no conflict of interest with Russia, and in many cases the values Putin espouses could be a lesson for us - Putin doesn't let terrorists and the "gay lobby" dictate policies in his nation, and he also is very supportive of the Church and of persecuted Christian communities around the world, something our own nation has miserably failed to do.  Trump is on the right track with this, but there is much to be done.  Also, America has not arrived at recovery yet - much of the damage wreaked by the Obama years is still evident, and as mentioned the cultural landscape in this nation looks more like Nagasaki or Berlin in 1946.  We are still divided, "political correctness" is stifling true freedom of expression, and the twin "wild cards" of sexual harassment and racism are being used and abused as weapons against people others don't agree with.  Until this is dealt with at a fundamental level, true recovery will be slow at best.  Fundamentally America has a moral problem that is rooted in decades of Enlightenment-inspired postmodern gobbeldygook, and it has gotten so tangled that it will take either time or a radical solution to remedy it.  It remains to be seen how Establishment career politicians, bankrolled by special-interest lobbies and their own agendas taking precedence over their constituents' needs, will react to Trump's initiatives.  Much of what he has said would actually be beneficial, but activist judges and career Congressmen are going to present challenges.  It is one reason why I would tend to agree with de Chosal and Coulombe, as well as historic thinkers such as Chesterton, Ilyin, and Belloc, who all concur that democracy as such is a bad idea and cannot really exist - as Coulombe has noted in many of his own discourses and books correctly, democracy ultimately has its end in totalitarianism.   De Chosal notes on page 129 of his book that democracy is a system that "has no fundamental understanding of the concept of goodness."  This mirrors some things that the late Pope St. John Paul II noted in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor that my Moral Theology graduate course had us read a couple of years back, and on thing that the late Pontiff notes is that truth is the place from which the dignity of conscience derives (VS 63).  God's plan, which is truth, poses no threat to man's genuine freedom, and indeed only the acceptance of this truth is the only way to affirm that freedom (VS 45).  Further, it is only in this freedom, foundated in God's truth, that man can turn to what is good (VS 33).  Goodness and truth are actually transcendant properties of being (along with beauty) and theologically and metaphysically speaking they are intrinsic to our worldview, which in turn is reflected in the socio-political structures that govern us.  When one attempts to redefine what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful apart from God's establishment of these things as universals, it creates problems.  The concept of goodness therefore that de Chosal notes modern democracy lacks is also in part due to a lack of understanding truth (or a blatant denial of the true, if I dare say so).   Democracy's subjectivization of truth and goodness has led to this confusing mess that is exemplified today as "political correctness," and it is one reason why it will inevitably fail.  Many early architects of Enlightenment thought, such as William of Ockham and Marsilus of Padua, as well as Machiavelli and Descartes, denied universals via a school of thought called nominalism, and in doing so it also elevated individual reason above empirical evidence in many cases - what one therefore thinks is true, in true Cartesian fashion, then becomes the truth, and that means that the "good" is redefined by the whims of an individual rather than universal norms.  When that happens, a man can therefore claim he is a woman because he "feels" like one (note this is the whole idea behind this transgenderism issue) or a White woman can say she is "Black" because her "soul" is Black.  Reality for such people is what they say it is, rather than what it actually is, and therefore this is why transcendental properties of being (goodness, truth, beauty) are reduced to subjective definitions.  And, that is why de Chosal correctly observes a deficiency in democratic systems regarding the fundamental concept of goodness.  That discourse now relates to Trump's speech last night in this way.

The phrase "Make America Great Again!" has a feel-good quality that rightly should be an admirable goal.  And, for those who do embrace traditional values, we know what that entails.  However, we need to remember something as well, and it is also a good barometer to measure our President by too - Machiavelli had a premise to his political theory, as laid out in The Prince, that what is true is irrelevant to what works.  Truth, then, for a person with a Machiavellian mindset is sacrificed for "what works," and we have seen where that has led with recent foreign policy decisions by both Republicans and Democrats alike.  Take this issue of the Armenian Genocide.  The truth is that it was a real event that happened in 1915, and practically every Armenian alive can testify to that today as almost all of them have lost family in that event.  Logic dictates that recognizing that this event happening is the thing to do, but the Machiavellian mindset of many of our leaders see something else - they see dollar signs, as the seductive siren call of the Turkish lobby, with its rich resources, has wooed Senators and Presidents alike to ignore the Armenian Genocide as a historical event because it might "embarrass" our Turkish "friends."  But, here is the thing - the Armenian Genocide was a true event; it happened, and the Turks bear culpability for it.  So, why do elected officials such as Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, and practically every sitting US President since Woodrow Wilson choose to ignore and (in the case of Eddie Johnson) outright deny it happened?  Because what works for them is more important than what's true - Turkish money to fill their coffers, much of it generated from Azeri oil fields, speaks louder than the graves of innocent Armenians slaughtered in the Middle Eastern deserts.  The personal "good" of personal wealth has priority over the greater good of the preservation of a nation of people.  Yet, is it all that "good?"  Ask former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who now is in prison (and he is a Republican - career politicians know no parties!) for bribery, much of which came from Turkish drug money and other things in which Hastert, who could have in his position at the time as Speaker of the House passed a measure recognizing the reality of the Armenian Genocide but did not.   Let's look at something else equally appalling - abortion.   Trump is thankfully making a pro-life stand in his Presidency, and he afirmed that loudly last night in his address.  But, we need to recall something - Planned Parenthood, which is the largest mass-production entity in the abortion industry, is also rich, and on its bankrolls sit many Congressmen.   To these Congressmen (Pelosi is the most blatant) the howls and squeals of a motley bunch of sexually-frustrated ugly feminists in "pussy hats" mean more than the millions of innocent unborn children who end up dying before their life starts in agonizing ways - the reason why is money!  Pelosi and those like her (including many Republicans) are very Machiavellian in this aspect in that they are going with what gets them the most votes rather than what is morally right and good, and thus de Chosal's assessment that there is a deficiency in the universal concept of goodness, as well as revealing the real objective of the "leaders" (and I use that term loosely!) is to seek and preserve their own power, only appealing to the common good when it serves their interests - this is right out of Machiavelli's playbook in that they choose what works over what is true.  Ear-tickling - particularly if it has the backing of a bunch of rich celebrities and powerful special interests - works, and unfortunately it works too well - often, it is too late by the time the itch subsides and people realize they have been lied to.  And, that leads to a couple of closing thoughts before I conclude in regard to our President.

Trump was a fluke as far as his election was concerned - he was outside the "Establishment," and in many aspects observers on both the right and left of the political spectrum have correctly observed that the "Trump Train" was the fruit of a popular discontent with traditional politicians.  Under the surface of our American society there is a brewing of discontent that one day will erupt when finally many normal citizens will say "enough is enough" and change will happen.  Trump's election is a harbinger of that in a good way, but a lot remains to be seen as of yet, as it is only his first year in office.  When the eruption of popular discontent takes place, we need to pay careful attention to where it leads the nation as a whole - after all, many writers (Chesterton, Coulombe, de Chosal, and others) have noted that totalitarianism is the natural climax of democracy, and as Pope St. John Paul II notes in Veritatis Splendor, the root of modern totalitarianism is in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person, and when democracy loses a fundamental concept of goodness, then dignity of the human person is cheapened and the person becomes a mere means to be used by those who wish to exercise power.  This is why we need to pay attention and be careful, lest we fall into a hole we cannot get out of.  In order for America to be great again, a fundamental sense of goodness must be recovered, and that goodness is ultimately found in God's truth.  It is here that politics and theology meet at a crossroads, a crossroads which is often blocked and ignored by the champions of secularism, yet we cannot afford to do so.  America's greatness, therefore, is found in solid values rooted in universal truth, not in subjective ideas of truth exploited for ambitious means.  And, that essentially is what I would say I got from Trump's address last night.  If he stays true to it and can resist those who seek to undermine what he is trying to do, we might have a fighting chance as a nation.  But, there is still much to do, and ultimately it is God in whom we place our trust, as Trump is but human too.  Have a good week everyone.

Some Observations

Well, it is 2018 - a new year and a new beginning for us.   As I write this today I do so in a retrospective mode; there are a lot of things going through my mind, and it's a matter of where to discuss first honestly.  I have reflections on theological issues I could discuss, on social issues, and also just some personal anecdotes.  So, why don't we just make it a combination of all three?

Well, to begin, our household had one of the best holiday seasons we have enjoyed in many years, and it has been great.  I have spent the past week watching four seasons of Billy the Exterminator on DVD that Barb got me for Christmas.   If you have not watched this guy, you should - he is something else!   The "Billy" in question is Billy Bretherton, who with his family operates a company called Vex-Con in northern Louisiana.  Vex-Con's specialty is removing pesky critters and bugs from people's houses, and they do a pretty effective job of it.  Billy is not your typical bug man though - he actually looks kinda freaky, as he is dressed in black leather, has one hell of a wacky hairdo, and he looks more like a rock star or an outlaw biker than he does a pest-control specialist.  But, don't let looks be deceiving - Billy is also a veteran of the Air Force, and he has extensive training in etymology, so he knows his stuff.  And, despite how weird he looks, I would not hesitate to call the guy if I had a problem with pests - and, as an added bonus, the DVD's have additional features that give some good tips about getting bugs out of your house (who would have thought, for instance, that Alka-Seltzer in water would be a flea deterrent?  Fascinating!).  I got into watching this show a few years ago as a couple of co-workers were raving about it, and have been a fan of Billy ever since.  It was also a good diversion after the busy holiday season we had, and also prior to getting back to the routine of life as we have done this week too.

Moving on, there are other things happening too.  As I had mentioned earlier last year, I have sort of re-connected with my interest in the Armenian people, especially after finding out I had some Armenian heritage of my own, which was perhaps one of the most exciting things I have uncovered in my family tree.  Related to that, over the Christmas holiday I discovered something really neat in regard to Armenian music, and it is an orchestra based out of the Republic of Armenia called the Kohar Symphony Orchestra.  Named after the mother of its main benefactor, the Kohar Orchestra is one of the most phenomenal music groups I have come across, and I fell in love with them immediately.  Kohar tours worldwide, under the baton of both its previous maestro, Sebouh Abcarian, an Armenian/Cypriot who unfortunately passed on a few years back, as well as the current maestra Natalie Galstyan, a native of Yerevan in Armenia itself.  The concerts are riveting too - the sophisticated graphics as well as the stellar musical arrangements make for a remarkable concert experience.  One aspect of the concerts is audience participation - one of the major emphases of the Kohar organization is to encourage Armenian national consciousness, and it does so by emphasizing all aspects of the Armenian legacy.  If one studies history, there were actually two Armenian kingdoms - the one was Armenia proper, which is also reputed to be the first Christian nation on earth (although that is an object of debate between both my Armenian and Assyrian friends, as both groups claim that distinction), which was ruled by the Bagratid Dynasty (of which I am descended as well) for many centuries until at least the first waves of Muslim conquest in the 7th century.  The second kingdom, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, came later and was established on the Meditteranean coast in what is today southeastern Asia Minor.   This kingdom existed between the 10th and 12th centuries, and represented a sort of fusion of cultures - it was both ethnically Armenian but also was part of the Crusader States of the time.  That kingdom had a standard flag too which looked like this:

In Kohar's concerts, one of the most amazing things to see is the waving of thousands of these ancient banners of the Kingdom of Cilicia by the audience, especially when the orchestra plays songs like Sardarabad (which commemorates a very important victory the Armenians had in 1918 over an Ottoman Turkish force, a victory which may well have saved the Armenians as a people).  Seeing that has impacted me deeply, and it has also done a couple of things for me personally.  For one, it has made me even more appreciative of my own heritage, as possessing Armenian blood now means something very significant for me.  Secondly, it has sort of compelled me to explore Armenian history more too, and I have learned a lot in the past week in particular about the Cilician Kingdom - as a monarchist as well, this fascinates me.   In the coming year, I look forward to becoming more involved with both my own Armenian interests as well as obtaining some of Kohar's concerts on DVD (I got the 2010 Lebanon concert already, which was one of their best).  If you wish to check out Kohar's website, it is at www.koharconcert.com. 

The Kohar Orchestra and Chorus in Beirut, 2010

In addition to my renewed interest in Armenians, there are many other things to discuss, including some reflections again on recent events.  It seems as if anymore whenever the news comes on, someone is making sex allegations against someone else, and to be honest it is starting to get old.  I have addressed all this before, so no need to get into it again in detail, but I did want to say something about it.  Whether the allegations are legitimate (as with Harvey Weinstein or Al Franken) or bogus (as I believe they are with Roy Moore and Bill Cosby) seems to mean less these days - sex accusations are becoming both an effective weapon to use against people one doesn't like as well as a lucrative financial opportunity, as many are jumping on the bandwagon for other reasons than trauma.  This is not a good thing, mainly because what it means is that in time the public is going to begin to be desensitized to the whole thing, and when that happens it will make justice and vindication for actual victims very difficult.  I also see this as a ploy by some on the political left to gain some sort of ground in the culture wars - radical feminists, the "gay lobby," and the numerous celebrities, academic elites, and politicians pushing those agendas have one thing in mind:  they are out to destroy traditional definitions of morality, family, and faith.   By using tactics like this to crush their opponents, leftists are gaining a grounding in those areas they should not have, and it is starting to look extremely bad for those of us who hold to more traditional views on such issues.   One sex scandal has opened a floodgate of accusations, allegations, and outright character assassinations against prominent people, and if we had brains as a society we would actually start to maybe question the volume and frequency of these incidents, as it may turn out that many of them are wrong or intentionally deceptive.  Most won't though, as we tend to as a society be gullible, and it will be to our detriment.  Sex and race have become effective and lethal weapons of the establishment, and it has gotten to the point that even a mere allegation presupposes guilt, which should not be the case.  Those accused are entitled to due process, and before the rest of us weigh in on any of it, we would do well to keep our mouths shut and learn the facts first.   Enough said on that, as I feel that is the bottom line to the whole issue.  However, this meme pretty much sums up the feeling many are starting to have about this flood of allegations that we are bombarded with daily now:  

Anyway, moving on to more positive stuff here, winter is now officially here.  As we have come to our first full year at our new home in Hagerstown, MD, we do so with some chilly temps outside - it has been in the low teens outside over the past week, and we got a dusting of snow a couple of days ago too.  After living 27 years in Florida, that is definitely an adjustment, as over those past years the lowest it had gotten down there was maybe in the low 40's.  And, despite how crazy some people have thought us to be for moving back here, I don't regret the decision one bit - I still love being back home!  The cold is a minor thing, and it's to be expected.  But, on the other hand, it also made the holidays feel more like the holidays this year - I cannot fathom how, for instance, some of our friends in Florida could put Christmas tree lights on palm trees.  To be honest, it makes the palm tree look like a malnourished Baywatch extra!  Do you recall those old cartoons from the 1930's?  If so, when I think of Christmas lights on a palm tree, this is the image that gets stuck in my head:

Any rate, last year was a good year, and we expect a lot for 2018 as well.

The main challenges of last year were getting established, as well as dealing with a few pesky in-laws who don't know how to mind their own business, which is what I want to talk about now.  For the most part, my in-laws are not bad people, and many of them are fantastic.  But, you always have one or two that want to be a pain in the butt, and those can get the best of you at times.  That is why I am doing a little lesson here for you all now that will help some of you who are facing similar problems.  I have two sisters-in-law who, for lack of a better term, are pains in the butt.  They are stuck-up, nosey, contentious, and they have caused a lot of problems for many of their other family members.  At one time, I honestly despised them, but of course you cannot maintain your Christianity if you entertain such sentiments or act upon them.  So, last year I made a commitment to start praying for them, as they really need it.  One thing you learn about forgiveness is that you don't necessarily have to run out and scream to the world "I forgive you!" as forgiveness has to be received as well as given.  So, what I believe the Gospels teach us, as well as our Church's teaching, is this - it is our responsibility to cultivate an attitude of forgiveness, and be ready to dispense it when the person who offended you is ready to receive it.  Reason for this is actually quite practical - the person who offends you may either be unaware they did so, or they may think they were doing a good thing by doing so, although they would be wrong.  By praying for these offending people, you do two things.  First, it helps you to develop an attitude of forgiveness for them.  Secondly, it also encourages the offender to maybe start to feel a conviction about the fact they wronged you, and in doing so eventually someone is going to have to talk about it and resolve it one way or the other.  That means then like everything else true forgiveness requires preparation, and it is that preparation that we ourselves must be open to, and we do so by trusting God to help us deal with the offense in the proper way.  In time, for instance, it is hoped that my two wayward sisters-in-law will come to their senses and make right what they have wronged, but in the meantime I just have to pray for them until that time is ready.  I hope that encourages some of you who may be dealing with hurts or offenses people have committed against you, and hopefully by taking this to heart you can begin a healing process in yourselves as well.  We all deal with this to some degree - human nature pretty much guarantees that! - but it is our willingness to move forward and seek constructive reparation that makes the difference.  

On that note, I will wrap up for now, but we will have the chance to visit and I will have other opportunities to share throughout the year as well.  May all of you reading this have a good and prosperous 2018 ahead, and will see you soon! 

Year-End Wrap-Up

It is almost beyond comprehension that this year is already coming to an end!  It seems like the older I get, the faster time goes.  So, what kind of year has 2017 been to us anyway?  To be honest, it has been quite a different year - a new chapter in life has opened, there have been many challenges, and also a lot of new things have taken place which have shown that we are indeed at a new place.  Was 2017 a bad year though?  Not at all actually - it has had its challenges for us, but I would not say it has been bad at all.  In many ways, as a matter of fact, it has been one of the best years, although at times circumstances don't appear to reflect the fact.  As mentioned, a lot of new things have happened, and if there were a theme to the events of the year, it would be "New Beginnings."  Let me now touch on some highlights of the past year.

A New Place

The most radical aspect of this year is the fact we moved, and that move happened on the very first day of the year - last year at this time, as a matter of fact, we were in the midst of packing up the house and preparing for it.  After spending an entire day on December 31st of last year doing the backbreaking task of loading our whole house into a Penske truck, it was at 8:30PM on that day that we pulled out of our driveway in Lakeland, FL, and we headed east on I-4 before turning north onto I-95 and leaving the state for good.  When 2017 dawned on us that night, we were just north of Jacksonville heading toward the Georgia state line.  That move was significant for several reasons, and it indeed signaled a new chapter for us.  But, we need to go back in order to move forward in order to tell the story, so let's do that.

In August of 2016, I had reached a milestone of living 27 years in Florida, with the exception of two months in California and a few months in Dothan, AL in 1992.  That time frame itself is of great surprise to me, as when I came to Florida initially I was a 19-year-old kid fresh out of high school and just starting college.   That point in my life, much as this one has, closed another chapter on my life story as well - I had opened the door to adulthood that year and stepped out of the shelter of childhood.  When I graduated high school in mid-1989, I recall being both excited and fearful, and the reality hit me like a ton of bricks when I was loading the last box of my belongings in Dad's van that year.   I still remember standing out in front of the house on Salt Lick Road in Terra Alta that day - Mom was actually crying, as was the little nonagenarian lady Myrt who had more or less adopted me as a new grandchild, and a great adventure lay ahead.  Arriving in Georgia that year on the same highway I left Florida just this past year (I-95), it was apparent that my life was changing.   After a summer with Dad that year in Georgia, I arrived on the campus of Florida Baptist Theological College in Graceville, FL, on August 26, 1989, and that began my long sojourn in the state of Florida.  Over the next 27 years, I would get married, earn my Bachelor's degree, and accomplish a lot of other things, but to be honest, Florida was beginning to seem like a dead-end to us - Barbara and I felt stuck there, a feeling we both had extending back as far as 1997 but that we ignored as life moved on with jobs and other responsibilities.  It was due to a final crisis in 2015, when we almost lost our house, that we finally made the decision to make a big change for good, and we spent the better part of 2016 preparing for it.  I remember that night in late December 2015 when we were facing eviction at that point from our house that Barbara and I stayed up all night talking about what we were going to do, praying to God for direction, and just really seeking some guidance, and at that point it came to both of us - we both saw Maryland as our destination, and it was decided at that point to just do it - move out for good, as Florida was not promising much to us nor did we have any real roots there anyway.  After God miraculously delivered us from our rental crisis, as well as providing us both with good work, we began in earnest to prepare for this big move.   It had its challenges, but 2016 was actually a good year to do it, and for the most part our preparations went smoothly.  So, from that long night-long talk we had at the end of December 2015 until pulling out of the driveway on December 31st, 2016, we now had a purpose.

Many have asked us, "why Maryland?"   The reason for that is simple - Maryland is an ideal location for us personally in that it is my home territory - where we live now is only minutes from the border of my home state of West Virginia.  Also, Maryland presents opportunities we would not have had otherwise in Florida, although in the course of this year it has taken some time to tap into them.  We have had our sights on this area since at least late 1997, so we knew for almost 20 years that this was where we needed to be.  So, when we were finally faced with making a decision, it was as if the apple that had fallen off the tree and hit Sir Isaac Newton on the kopf had likewise knocked sense into us, although it took a near-catastrophe to get us here now.  After really looking over our options, it was finally decided that Hagerstown would be the ideal location for us - it is at a convenient distance from everything we need, and it is also a nice town that is within 30 minutes or less of three other states.  And that is how we ended up here. 

Of course, this move was not without its sacrifices.   The first of those occurred last year just prior to our move, when we had come up to Parsons to visit my grandparents while scouting out the area.  It was of course wintery out, and on the Saturday we were to head back, a major snow storm had dumped a few inches of white stuff on Tucker County.  So, early that morning, when we were leaving my grandfather's house just south of Parsons to head home, we took some bad advice from my stepmother to head east on what was to be Corridor H construction, which took us over Dry Fork Mountain between Elkins and Harman.  About midway we started to notice that the roads had a lot of ice on them, and I cautioned Barbara that we needed to watch out for ice.  Not 30 seconds after saying that, we hit a nasty patch of black ice and after a few spins out of control in the road, we flipped twice before finally French-kissing the north side of Dry Fork Mountain, which also landed us upright.  Although we were not injured in that accident, it did total our Ford Ranger pickup we had owned for almost 8 years at that point, which was a tragic loss.  But, thanks to some distant relatives who lived in the nearby community of Dry Fork who graciously gave us a lift to a local mechanic shop called Dave's Auto, we were taken care of - as an extra blessing, the owner's daughter-in-law was sweet enough to give us a lift into Elkins where we were able to rent a car to drive back home, a trip which was uneventful and in style, as the car they leased us was a 2015 Mustang, which was nice!  And, in less than a week, our insurance company gave us a nice settlement, which we were also able to apply toward our moving expenses (along with a gracious loan from my dear sister-in-law Sue, which was a real blessing as well) and that kept us on-track.  Although we have yet to invest in another vehicle, for now at least we have Mom's, which has been excellent in getting us around for the past year. 

The move itself was also challenging too, as it was a lot of backbreaking work loading the Penske truck, which due to a miscalculation was undersized, so that meant we also had to leave several things behind.  But, we got here.  When we pulled into the Super 8 Motel on exit 9 off I-81 in Martinsburg, WV, which would be our home for the following week, we had about 65% of our former home in a Penske truck with us, and that was still enough to get us settled.  Now, when we moved here, we had no clue as to where we would be eventually living, which is why we stayed in the motel in Martinsburg for the first week of 2017.  During that time, we looked into several houses before settling on one that sort of came our way by an ad in the local paper - there was a huge mobile home park called Lakeside Village just south of Hagerstown, MD, which had some nice mobile homes open, and we made an appointment on Wednesday, January 4th, to check them out.  We went, filled out the paperwork, and saw the new place, and on Friday we received the call that they offered us the lease, and we then spent all that Friday and early Saturday moving stuff into the new home - again, it was backbreaking work in 11-degree weather, and while chilly outwardly I was sweating like I was in a jungle under my coat, and would pay for that a couple of weeks later when I caught a nasty virus.  But, we were home, and here we have been ever since - soon we'll be celebrating our first year in this place, and it has actually been overall a pleasant experience, as it is a nice park and generally easy on us, although a bit steep pricewise.  At this point we are still acquiring new furnishings and have some more settling-in to do yet, but we've made progress.

Adjusting to living back in my home territory after living in Florida for 27 years has had its challenges, but overall I really believe it is the right thing to do and have no regrets.  Honestly, it is just good to be back home, and as a new chapter in our lives has opened, we want to make it one of our best.  We both anticipate that happening more so in 2018, as a lot of new things come our way as well.

Moving Forward

There are many other milestones that have happened the past year that need to be discussed as well, as they involve our church, my academic pursuits, and other things.  A lot of transition is still taking place even now as I write this, so much will have to be observed as it comes together.

When we moved up here earlier this year, the original idea was to continue work in the ACC at what was to be our parish, St. Michael the Archangel in Frederick.  We started out there at the beginning of the year, but a couple of months after our move, the parish church moved as well to a new building at an old Roman Catholic sanctuary dating from pre-Civil War times near the small community of Buckeystown, and at that point some changes started happening.  As I am on the verge of completing my Master's degree, it was originally my hope to serve the Church as maybe a catechist and possibly seek Holy Orders as a permanent deacon, but circumstances occurred which sort of changed our focus.  Although the Anglican Catholic Church has been a great communion to be part of the past 10 or so years, it also became apparent that I may not have much of a future serving there, and some other situations forced me back in June to take a long hard look at what I was doing and where I was going.  As it happened, just down the road from our house in Hagerstown was a vibrant Roman Catholic parish, St. Joseph's, and after having a change in schedule during the summer months - Barb was working for a teen counseling program called Catoctin Adolescent Program in nearby Sabillasville, MD, and had to work some odd hours - it was more convenient for us to attend church closer to home, so we started attending Mass intermittently in June.  This was the very thing that I was being shown as far as direction, and after deliberating over it, Barbara gave me some sound advice entailing the ACC - sometimes it is best to just "rip off the bandage."  So, I did that - I effectively resigned my post on the Vestry of St. Michael's, as well as relinquishing my layreader responsibilities there, and we began attending St. Joseph's here on a regular basis.  This was a rather easy transition, as I had already been confirmed Roman Catholic in the year 2000, and I took the steps to re-establish communion with the Roman Catholic Church and the transition was not difficult as I was still very much Catholic in convictions and theology anyway.  So, we became registered parishioners of St. Joseph's, and in the bulletin a couple of months later there was an announcement that catechists were needed for their Parish School of Religion, and I responded - after a screening process, I was teaching my first class of 6th-graders in September, and not long after Barbara also was able to volunteer to teach 3rd-graders, and here we are!  Teaching these kids has been very rewarding, as they are a fine group of young people and I found that I have more of a knack for doing this than I thought I had.  I have also become a Knight of Columbus as well, and we are now fully integrated into parish life, which is nice.  That opens more doors for me as well to put all this education I have to use, and I now look forward to that. 

As for school, I am also excited to note that I have completed my final semester of coursework in my Master's program at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and upon taking the comprehensive exam in January I will anticipate having my degree.  Attending Franciscan University has been one of the truly rewarding experiences of my past 4 years, as it has been spiritually enlightening, academically challenging, and just an overall awesome experience.  As I finish up my final steps to get the degree I have worked for, I also plan on taking about a year off to recuperate before starting my doctoral program at Catholic University of America, as honestly I just need to take a break.  Although academic achievement is enriching and rewarding, it also can be taxing, and lately I have also been feeling that.  In the interim, I have to do some preparation work anyway for my doctoral studies, which entail taking a GRE exam later this coming year, as well as brushing up on both my German and Latin, both of which I had in high school but have gotten rusty but both of which are also very integral to my doctoral studies as reading efficiency in both is a requisite.  To be quite honest, I am kind of sick of exams and tests, but they come with the territory - in order to get a quality education, one has to master the material in such a way as it can be applicable to the field one will work in.  It is almost scary to think that by the time I receive my doctorate though I will be 53 years old!  Imagine that - spending almost all my life with education; it seems at times as if it never ends!  But, again, the rewards outweigh the challenges, and despite the hard work, as well as my being a target of misunderstanding by some unsupportive but mouthy family members who seem to take pleasure at condemning and criticizing my efforts, in the end it's going to all be worth it.  And, with only a few people to thank for helping me along the way  - God of course, as well as Barbara, to name two important ones - I am blessed that I have come as far as I have.  And, the important lesson is that despite the wagging tongues of meddling relatives who like having opinions on everything but are of little use otherwise, it is important to press on and finish the task at hand.  Discipline is a good thing, and it has its own rewards.

Milestones and Memories

There have been other accomplishments this year as well outside of church, school, and the move itself.  One of those is a very important one that I want to spend a little time on now, as it has redefined who I am to a degree, and it is also one of the most exciting discoveries I have made in many years.

One of the major interests I have in my own life is my own roots - I have extensively researched my genealogy for many years, and still conduct some of that off and on as I am able.  Over the past few months I was able to do a little bit of research, and what I came across brings many things into perspective for me personally.  I have established already in the past that I am a blood descendant of a minor British aristocrat by the name of Sir Thomas West, who was the 3rd Baron DeLaWarre (he is also the man after whom the state of Delaware was named).  Sir Thomas's own pedigree is an ancient one, with ties to the Plantagenets, Charlemagne, as well as other noble families across Europe.  However, until this time, the major thing that caught my attention about my roots was that I was a descendant of St. Vladimir of Novgorod, who of course in AD 988 converted and Christianized Russia.  That in itself would be impressive enough, but as this saga continually unfolds, there are more branches in the tree I have discovered.  One of them is through an ancestral line of Sir Thomas West's called the Percy's, who were known as the Barons of Leicester.  They, come to find out, have as their distant forebears two noble Armenian families, the Mamikonians and the Bagratids.  It would take a lot of time to document how the intricacies of that all comes together (although I have charted it out as the line goes back over 1300 years), but it is personally significant to me, which is what I want to discuss now.

Armenian advocacy has been a part of who I am since at least 1988, when I first learned of both Armenians and Assyrians.  Anyone who knows me knows that my work with Armenians and Assyrians is a very important aspect of my personal identity, and although I have been somewhat dormant with that over the past 20 or so years, I still have a very committed conviction about it.  In doing much soul-searching regarding a new church, etc., this past summer, I had this pull to revisit my old passion for the Armenian cause, and interesting enough in April a movie hit the theatres called The Promise, which focuses on the events leading up to the tragic 1915 Genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks in which 1.5 million Armenians, as well as huge numbers of Assyrians and Greeks, were martyred.  That movie touched at something in my core being, and it was this year that I made a renewed commitment to supporting my Armenian and Assyrian friends in a way I haven't since about 20 years ago.  At around the time The Promise opened at theatres around Easter, I also began to revisit some of my genealogical research as well, and that is where I believe God brought together so much about who and what I am - I was led somehow to discover this Armenian root I have in my own DNA, and upon doing so, it was as if a door was opened, and at the very core of my own being the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide became more personal to me than it ever has been - these were my people, in a real sense now, who were affected, and the revelation of that stirred within me feelings I cannot even describe, but there was a connection that happened unlike anything I had felt previous.  As this all happened, a voice within me was almost shouting "You are Armenia!"  This was something God knew that I needed to discover, as my passion had been lost for many years, but this rekindled it in such a way that I think about it again almost daily.  In the coming year, I want to explore this even further, as it is a great gift I have been given that I was never aware of, and it brings together so many mysteries from over the years that now make perfect sense - I was drawn to Armenians all those years ago in high school because in a literal sense now I am Armenian myself.  I now understand more of what Saroyan wrote about in his books, as well as what Komitas and Mirzoyan composed in their great musical masterpieces, and now when I watch movies like The Promise I can see my connection.  There is so much that can be said of this, but it will have to wait for another time, as at the present there is still much to sort out.  But, I will affirm that this is no accidental occurrence either - God has timings and seasons for everything, and this was the time to discover and reconnect to something which has been a mystery for many years.  Thanks be to God for His wisdom in revealing all these things.

What Lies Ahead

As I write this, we are about to enter the holiday season.  The house now smells of the lingering odors of Christmas cookies baking combined with the apple smell of a plug-in air freshener, and just behind me the newly-decorated Christmas tree stands dormant waiting to be turned on later tonight as it gets dark out.  Also, outside there is a briskness in the 29-degree morning air, and the residue of a light dusting of snow that happened a couple of days ago still slightly lingers.  For the first time in many years, it feels like the holidays.  Living in Florida for almost 27 years, Christmas never really felt like Christmas, as on many holidays it was even 80 degrees out - you cannot take a holiday seriously when you have hibiscus blossoms and palm trees outside your doorstep.  So, although there was some festive mood, it always seemed like something was missing.  This year, for the first time in many years, I don't feel that - it feels like Christmas in this house today!  It is a fitting end to a challenging but exciting year as the new chapter in our lives has really began to unfold.  So, as I close today, I wish everyone reading this the most blessed of holiday seasons - including some old friends in Florida, who still have the misfortune of hibiscus blossoms and palm trees and not a snowball's chance you-know-where of any snow whatsoever.  Christmas is more than climate, and it is more than how many cookies you can bake and eat, how many presents you give or receive, and it is definitely more than Santa Claus, flying reindeer, and talking snowmen - Christmas symbolizes for humanity a new chapter of our collective story; it is God's giving of Himself, by coming as a humble child in a manger in a small town in a distant land over 2000 years ago, so that we can be restored to Him.  Let's keep that in focus even as the persistent pelting of commercialism and the bright lights and shiny tinsel on our Christmas trees can risk our distraction from that fundamental reason for the season.  It is also my prayer that you who read this have a blessed 2018 ahead as it dawns on us in less than 3 weeks, and hopefully all of us can thrive in many ways this coming year.  So, as you enjoy the beauty of the season, hopefully some of us can have that dusting of snow on Christmas morning as we awake from our slumber and open those festive packages we have been anticipating over the past several weeks.  Have a good remainder of 2017, and a good start to 2018.